Thursday, February 14, 2013

Richa Bhattarai's "Fifteen and Three Quarters"

The stories in Richa Bhattarai's "Fifteen and Three Quarters" have teenage love as a common theme. What are
the characteristics of teenage love? I detect impulsiveness and possessiveness
in the teenage characters in most of the stories. One can see instant break up
and patch up among lovers. In "And then there were none", a female
character spurns her pining lover to go into the arms of another guy who turns
out to be a philanderer. Horrified with his infidelity, she rushes back to her
"true" lover only in vain. This serves as the best instance of
impulsiveness. Characters in almost all stories are possessive. My "someone"
is repeated often in the stories. Now, there are not only romantic love stories
but filial love ("Poetry Personified"), figuratively maternal love ("Apple
Mango in Raspberry"), love between friends are also to be seen. Richa
possesses a good grasp over literary language which is seen in the story
"Soybean". There are repartees, rhyming words, one-liners and play of
language which pleased me. The long
story "Three Quarters" shows Richa's power of storytelling. It has the Rashomon-effect in the narrative as three characters tell their
versions of the same event, leaving the reader to judge the character. This
story certainly proves that Richa can go far ahead in literary writing. The
story "ABOBA" shows that Richa has a knack for humor as well. However,
there are certain drawbacks in the stories as well. The female characters are
not strong and assertive enough which I was expecting from a female writer. The
events in the stories seem to veer off from reality at times and the writer
seems to be inspired from books and movies rather than the real life. One
instance of filminess (or filmsiness, for that matter) is "Sand in my
Eye" in which the inanimate sand functions as a hero that saves a damsel
in distress in a filmy manner. The romantic horror story with premonition as
its anchor event, "Only in my Dreams" too feels unreal and filmy. If Richa carries out research on a topic that she is writing and
sharpens her skills in story-telling, she will certainly leave her mark in
literary world.